[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.]

And they say pretty much it is one of those cases where it was either quit or be fired:

NPR President and CEO Vivian Schiller has resigned after NPR’s board of directors decided that she could no longer effectively lead the organization.

This follows yesterday’s news that then-NPR fundraiser Ron Schiller (no relation) was videotaped slamming conservatives and questioning whether NPR needs federal funding during a lunch with men posing as members of a Muslim organization (they were working with political activist James O’Keefe on a “sting.”)

Vivian Schiller quickly condemned Ron Schiller’s comments, and he moved up an already-announced decision to leave NPR and resigned effective immediately. But Ron Schiller’s gaffe followed last fall’s dismissal of NPR political analyst Juan Williams, for which Vivian Schiller came under harsh criticism and NPR’s top news executive, Ellen Weiss, resigned.

(Source.) I think we are well past the point where it is time to cut off funding for public broadcasting. In theory it sounds good—a nice, neutral arbiter that makes sure that there are basic, publicly-needed elements somewhere on our dial, such as educational programming for children and neutral news at night. I mean I used to joke that Barney the Purple Dinosaur was vital to enabling my sister to get to work as a single mother, as it represented the “humane alternative to nailing my niece down to the carpet.” She would just plop my niece down, turn on an episode of Barney and go get ready for work, confident that her daughter will not have moved an inch while she was out of the room.

But the fact is that there is little doubt that a show like Barney would get incredible ratings if on commercial television. After all, other educational shows like Blue’s Clues and Dora the Explorer are found on commercial television. And when you throw in things like merchandising, there is little doubt that a Sesame Street would have no trouble finding a home on commercial TV—if it came to that. And as the video reveals it is far from self-evident that if federal funding was cut off, public broadcasting would have to shift to the typical commercial TV format. They might survive on donations alone.

And the reality is that this is not the neutral arbiter that we might have hoped. Which is bad in and of itself. It should be unthinkable to take money from everyone and funnel it into an organization that takes sides in our political debates. And we should feel that way whether our side benefits or not.

Update: In case there is any doubt on the subject of whether NPR or others in the public broadcasting arena take sides in our politics, there is this:

Fiore is talented, but this cartoon is just a mean-spirited attack on people who think differently than he does and doesn’t broaden the debate. It engages in the same kind of name-calling the cartoon supposedly mocks.

And why is NPR running a cartoon from just one perspective?

And who was this evil conservative who wrote that? Well, look and see.

But really if you doubt that public broadcasting has taken sides, I have two words for you: Bill Moyers.

You have to be singularly deluded or dishonest not to notice a liberal bias, there.

[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.]

I had previously mentioned the assault on Lara Logan and Angella Johnson on the night that Mubarak resigned. As I wrote at the time “How many more women were attacked that night, but thought they were the only ones and therefore didn’t report it?” We will probably never know the answer to that question, but we know that there were more yesterday:

A protest by hundreds of Egyptian women demanding equal rights and an end to sexual harassment turned violent Tuesday when crowds of men heckled and shoved the demonstrators, telling them to go home where they belong.

The women — some in headscarves and flowing robes, others in jeans — had marched to Cairo’s central Tahrir Square to celebrate International Women’s Day. But crowds of men soon outnumbered them and chased them out.

…

Tahrir Square was the epicenter of the protests that toppled President Hosni Mubarak last month after nearly 30 years in power. Women in Egypt had reported that Tahrir had been free of the groping and leering endemic in the country, but on Feb. 11, CBS correspondent Lara Logan was sexually assaulted and beaten on the final night of the 18-day revolt. The Associated Press does not name victims of sexual assault unless they agree to be identified.

At Tuesday’s march, men scolded protesters and said their concerns were not urgent in the aftermath of the uprising. When the women argued back, some were verbally abused or groped. Others were beaten and had to be ripped away from the groups of men.

It is heartening to read that for the most part the protesters were apparently less likely to grope and leer, compared to the general population, but it is also distressing to see this mob use sexualized violence in part of a campaign to terrorize women away from their rightful place as equal citizens.

In this case, further investigation did not uncover evidence that the defendants intended to commit any felony after the entry by false pretenses despite their initial statements to the staff of Senatorial office and GSA requesting access to the central phone system. Instead, the Government’s evidence would show that the defendants misrepresented themselves and their purpose for gaining access to the central phone system to orchestrate a conversation about phone calls to the Senator’s staff and capture the conversation on video, not to actually tamper with the phone system, or to commit any other felony.

The court document is here (.pdf). Entry under false pretenses with no intent to commit a felony is a straight misdemeanor, which is what O’Keefe pled to. He is not a felon and the government never had any evidence that he was.

Charles Johnson has shown reckless disregard for the truth, and owes O’Keefe an apology and a full correction.

To be clear, Johnson owes more than a tiny little correction changing the word “felon” to “misdemeanant” or “criminal.” If he cared about the truth, as he used to, he would explicitly acknowledge the evidence that shows that O’Keefe is not a felon and did not intend to commit a felony.

Charles Johnson outlining the full truth even though it hurts the left-wing narrative? Yeah, I’m not gonna hold my breath.

Thanks to airedaletwo.

UPDATE: Johnson’s correction is exactly what I expected:

Correction: James O’Keefe and his accomplices were originally charged with a felony in the attempt to break into Mary Landrieu’s office and bug her phones, but the charge was reduced to a misdemeanor when they pled guilty.

As I knew he would, Johnson implies that O’Keefe simply got a break because he pled. I knew, just like I knew that the sun would rise tomorrow, that he wouldn’t tell the full truth that I told you about in this post.